


Maybe Not Quite The Apocalypse

by EdgarAllenPoet



Series: Lucretia's Volumes [My Balance Fics] [23]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst in an overall sense of dread, COVID 19, Dad Merle, Dad'n'port, Family Fluff, Full House - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23458591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllenPoet/pseuds/EdgarAllenPoet
Summary: Two weeks into their nine-person-party, and Taako was officially losing his mind.--The seven birds + Kravitz and Angus get quarantined
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Series: Lucretia's Volumes [My Balance Fics] [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556773
Comments: 12
Kudos: 145





	Maybe Not Quite The Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> Merle is a nurse. 
> 
> The seven birds are a family in whatever way makes sense for you, classic parental Davenport and Merle and kid everyone else. 
> 
> It's a little heavy with the subject matter, but I feel pretty good after writing it. Maybe you'll feel a bit better reading it. (Also I'm writing from the United States, so it's set in the United States).

Lup and Kravitz were playing Twister on the kitchen floor, which was not how Taako expected to spend the apocalypse. 

He’d also expected the apocalypse to be a bit different-- more final boss fights and magic powers, and less stay-at-home orders and handwashing PSA’s. They’d been essentially grounded by the government, and Taako was descending into madness. 

His house, it turned out, was not large enough for nine.

The Taakitz-Blupjeans house was a humble one. Humble in the sense that it was rented by four Ph.D. students and the only reason they’d been able to give the down payment in the first place was because Kravitz’s mother was L _oaded_ with a capital L. They had a basement, which Barry and Lup turned into their goth nerd fantasy living space. They had a queen-sized bed from Goodwill and a My Chemical Romance poster from high school. It had the comfiest couch in the entire house and plenty of space for whatever dorky science stuff they got up to down there. 

There was a tiny upstairs, which consisted of the master bed and bath and nothing else. The nerds got the downstairs, the hottest couple ever got the upstairs, and everything on the ground level was shared living space. They had a kitchen, a living room, a washing machine, and a spare bedroom for whatever family member decided to spend the night that night. 

That family member had been Magnus for three months worth of nights in a row, now. He was still paying rent on his and Julia’s place across town, but the apartment was far too lonely for one. He hadn’t moved out officially, and considering it hadn’t even been a year since the accident, none of them had the heart to push it. They let Magnus move himself in, they minded their business, and someone was always ready to lay on top of Magnus and pet his hair when he came home looking especially heartbroken. 

So Magnus was the first to move in for the quarantine. Magnus lost his job, and the Institute shut itself down, and the five of them found themselves sitting around the coffee table on a Tuesday afternoon eying each other suspiciously over a game of Fuck You Uno when someone knocked on the door. 

Lucretia let herself in the front door with a rather resigned looking Davenport. While Lucretia explained that a _houseboat_ was not sustainable during a global pandemic, Taako dealt out two more hands and invited them into the card game. They pulled out the sofa bed and dragged the extra quilts out of the linen closet. They prepared two more cups of coffee for the morning, and they went to bed like normal. 

Angus showed up next. Taako and Kravitz picked him up at the train station, and he moved in carrying his body weight in textbooks and prattling on about Zoom lectures. They promised him silence at Barry’s desk for his school work and added a second deck of cards to their Uno game. 

Merle was the last to show up. He didn’t even call ahead, just turned up on their front porch carrying two different duffle bags and grinning with a clean-shaven face. Taako and Lup screeched when they saw him, screaming bloody murder, and Magnus almost made himself sick laughing while Merle griped that facial hair wasn’t N95 compatible, he’d had no _choice_. 

“Need to be close to the hospital,” he said. “They really need old hands on deck if they’re calling old coots like me outta retirement.” 

There was a good amount of bitching about Merle trying to kill them, but they adjusted seamlessly. Merle and Davenport moved into Magnus’s room, and Magnus moved onto the sofa-bed. Lucretia bunked down on the couch in the basement, and they set Angus up on an air mattress on the living room floor. 

Even though Merle was being floated to units without direct contact, filling in spaces when younger nurses moved to the covid floors, he changed every evening in the backyard. He came home from the hospital, stripped down under the kitchen window, and threw his scrubs straight in the washing machine as they all screamed and complained about the naked old man walking through their house. 

It was a pretty good system, and they only drove each other moderately insane. After a few long nights of Magnus’s snoring, Angus dragged the air mattress up their stairs and set up camp in Taako and Kravitz’s room instead, and when Taako joked about locking Angus out for a quicky, Lup elbowed him in the ribs and Kravitz choked on air and Angus raised a single, slow, unamused eyebrow. 

Fantasy Jesus Christ, teenagers were annoying. 

Nine people at the table slowed Fuck You Uno down a bit too much for it to be fun anymore, so they switched to Spoons and made an absolute ruckus out of it. The rest of the party banned Taako and Lup from sitting next to each other under the false assumption that they couldn’t cheat from opposite sides of the circle, and Davenport nearly gave Barry a black eye by thwapping him with his spoon when Barry tried to steal it. When the game was down to two men standing, Magnus and Kravitz got into a full-fledged wrestling match over the final spoon. It was nice to know Kravitz was obviously plenty comfortable with his family, and also hilarious to see Magnus pick Kravitz up and toss him before sprinting into the backyard, spoon held aloft in victory. 

Four days into their nine-person-party, they broke out a jigsaw puzzle and pushed all the living room furniture against the walls to make space for putting it together. 

Six days into their nine-person-party, and they decided to climb the maple tree in the backyard. Lup fell out and nearly crushed Lucretia with her landing, and Davenport scolded all of them that they couldn’t get hurt because they couldn’t go to the emergency room to fix it. It was just like old times, when they’d get up to endlessly stupid shit as high schoolers and Merle would patch them up at the kitchen table while Davenport lectured them all on safety and precaution and self-preservation. 

Seven days into their nine-person-party, and Barry had deep-cleaned every room in the house. Lup had taught Angus to make three different desserts, and Lucretia was fifty thousand words into whatever it was she was writing. Taako hadn’t paid enough attention to know, but he would bet anyone five dollars it was Star Trek fanfiction. 

Eight days into their nine-person-party, and they fell asleep in the living room during a Star Trek marathon. 

Two weeks into their nine-person-party, and Taako was officially losing his mind. 

Don’t get him wrong, he loved these fuckers, but cha’boy needed space to breathe. He woke up late on a Thursday morning already irritated, the house a din of activity around him. In the kitchen, which sat directly under the master bedroom, Taako could hear cackling laughter and two different conversations over the sound of something crackling on the stove. There was music playing somewhere, and when he dragged himself downstairs he saw the TV was on as well and could hear Angus doing his online classes in the basement. 

“Hey there, Sport,” Merle said, tapping his knuckles into Taako’s hip as he walked past the couch. 

Magnus bumped into him on his way into the kitchen, clapping a hand on his shoulder and shouting “ _bacon!”_ as he rushed past. Barry was at the stove holding a spatula and wearing an apron. Lucretia was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table holding a spinner and issuing commands to Lup and Kravitz, who were playing a pretty intense game of Twister on the kitchen floor.

Kravitz smiled at him. Taako glanced around the room and considered his options. He took a sip of someone’s coffee-- Lup’s, if they were still using their “assigned” mugs and hadn’t given into the chaos of a coffee-container free-for-all-- and decided that today wasn’t worth it. 

He turned on heel and went back upstairs, where it was still too loud. Magnus was in the shower, listening to a podcast and singing along to the theme song. Taako gave himself exactly five seconds to succumb to the sensory overload before jerking open the bedroom window and climbing out onto the roof. 

He slammed the window shut behind him and took a big, deep breath of crisp March air. The bedroom window opened directly above the roof covering the porch and the living room. Taako walked around a bit, keeping his footing light and secret, before going back towards the window and climbing onto the higher part of the roof. 

The rooftop covering the second story of the house sloped more sharply, and he crawled on his hands and toes up to the peak-- well away from the edge and in a nice sunny spot not covered by the maple tree’s overgrown branches. He stretched out on his back and threw his arms over his eyes for shading, and felt himself start to relax. He could hear the muted sounds of everybody moving around inside, but they were far less overwhelming when he was sitting on top of them, rather than wrapped up in them. A breeze came through every so often, raising goose bumps on the skin of his bare arms. He should have worn something more substantial than a t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants. He wasn’t sure how long he was up there for, but after a significant amount of time he heard the sound of the window creaking back open, of footsteps displacing the gravel on the shingled roof. He glanced over to find Kravitz hauling himself up to the higher part of the roof, and he grinned as he watched Kravitz crawl carefully across the roof before settling down next to him. 

Taako lifted an arm, and Kravitz slotted in underneath it, tucking his head into the crook of Taako’s shoulder and drawing circles on Taako’s stomach with his pointer finger. 

“You doing alright?” Kravitz asked, and Taako hummed. 

“Did you win your game?” he asked instead of answering. 

Kravitz laughed. He said, “Of course not.” And yes, against Lup, of course not. Taako pressed a kiss to the crown of Kravitz’s head, and Kravitz gave him a tight squeeze around the middle, and they dozed in the quiet peace of the roof for a good while longer before making their way back inside. 

Fifteen days into their nine-person-party, and Taako couldn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling with tired eyes and a heart beating just a touch too fast, trying to center himself on Kravitz’s warmth against his arm and the slow, steady cadence of his breathing. But every time he closed his eyes, the room spun, and any time he started to doze, another spike of anxiety jump started him into full consciousness again. 

And then, something stirred next to him. He closed his eyes and feigned sleep while Angus slipped out of bed and out of the room, and after a count of five Taako followed him, sliding out from under the covers and stepping carefully around the tangle of blankets falling off the air mattress. He closed the bedroom door behind him and found the TV playing quietly downstairs. 

He watched Angus climb over the back of the couch and settle against Magnus’s side on the sofa bed, heard the quiet murmur of Davenport’s voice from his seat on the arm chair. Taako crept down the stairs and joined them wordlessly, sliding in between Angus and Barry, who was endlessly working over a lump of silly putty in his left hand. Taako bumped his shoulder against Barry’s, and Barry dropped his head onto Taako’s shoulder in response. 

They were watching the news. 

Lup joined them shortly after-- Taako may have been an adult, but he was still half-convinced that he and Lup could _sense_ these things with each other. Twin powers, and all that. She squeezed into the space between Barry and the arm of the couch, her legs tangled with Barry’s and arm thrown across his stomach. She leaned into his chest. Barry reached for Taako’s hand and held it.

Lucretia came out of the kitchen holding two cups of tea, and she handed one to Davenport before sitting with her legs curled under her on a nest of blankets on the floor. The room was almost suffocatingly dark, lit only by the blue glow of the television screen.

Merle’s voice was the loudest sound in the room when he came in from the ground floor bedroom, asking, “You guys are still up?” He stopped with his hands on his hips and glanced around the room, before sighing and taking a seat on the coffee table. 

He spoke over the news report to say, “The world keeps spinning, one day at a time,” to a silent audience. The news report announced the cancellation of school through the end of the school year, and moved on to the drastic lack of personal protective equipment in their hospitals. It compared the event to the Spanish Flu, and Taako felt bile churn hot and dangerous in his stomach. Barry squeezed his hand a little tighter. Magnus’s knee was bouncing a quick staccato. 

Merle said, “This isn’t the first time we’ve been scared, and it isn’t going to be the last. I’ve seen uglier, scarier, seen whole populations die while the government refused to acknowledge it. We’ve gotten through worse. So we do our best, we wait for change, and we adjust when that change comes. That’s all we can do, and it may feel helpless, but nothing is hopeless.”

He grabbed the remote off of Magnus’s lap and tossed it at Davenport, a wordless suggestion to choose something else to focus on. Davenport punched in a few quick numbers, brought an episode of Golden Girls to the screen and turned the volume down a few ticks. 

Taako let his tired eyes grow weary and forced his thoughts to focus on the show, and he was only half-awake thirty minutes later when Magnus carried a sleeping Angus off to bed, when someone covered Taako up with a blanket. 

On the sixteenth day of their nine-person-party, Taako woke up almost entirely on top of a certain Barold Bluejeans. Lup was sleeping curled up on her side, back pressed against Barry’s side, arms wrapped tight around a pillow. Taako rubbed at his eyes and peeled himself away from Barry, looked up to find him holding a phone over his face and texting one-handed. He gave a lopsided grin and said, “Mornin.” Taako nodded his response. 

He rolled himself out of bed and did a quick survey of the house, found Merle and Davenport sharing coffee at the kitchen table. Lucretia and Magnus had commandeered Lup and Barry’s bed in the basement and were both face-down and snoring. Angus was back in bed upstairs, tucked in under an extra blanket, curled up tight into a ball with his hands tucked under his chin. He found Kravitz shortly later on the front porch, wrapped up in an afghan on the porch swing and Facetiming his mother. Taako filled in the space Kravitz offered him under the blanket and greeted Raven, falling into a meaningless conversation about the challenges she’s been tagging him in on Facebook that he keeps ignoring. Taako makes no promises to comply, and Kravitz laughed through a yawn and told his mother he loved her before hanging up so she could get back to her work. 

“Merle says we’re gonna be alright,” Taako said, nuzzling his cheek a little into Kravitz’s shoulder. He felt Kravitz nod, and he let the silence drag itself out a little bit longer before saying, “I want to get drunk.”

And despite it being barely ten a.m. on a weekday morning, Kravitz sat up a bit and said, “Gods, please, _yes,”_ and lets Taako drag him off to the kitchen.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is what we call coping, I guess.
> 
> \--
> 
> It's a crazy time to be working in health care. I'm watching nurses three times my age and ten times as tough fall apart a little bit every time I go into work. If you're not taking this thing seriously yet, you need to. 
> 
> Merle's speech is genuine though. It's scary. We're scrambling. Everything is going to suck for a while. Until we make it through the other side, find a way to cope, find a way to take care of yourself. Fall back on people who love you. 
> 
> And for the love of God wash your fucking hands.


End file.
